Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has revealed his motivation for fighting Jake Paul on July 20 as he returns to action at 58.
Tyson accepted an offer from Paul when their previous opponent, Tommy Fury, rejected the opportunity for a rematch. This summer, “The Baddest Man on the Planet” will appear on Netflix four years after his last exhibition.
Many fail to remember that Tyson’s fight in 2020 against Roy Jones Jr. was far from a spectacle. Both aged legends found it challenging to keep up any real pace for a prolonged period and clinched more than threw punches.
With an added quartet of years on top of his near 60-year-old aches and pains, the former undisputed champion will undoubtedly find it tough against a 27-year-old opponent.
Nonetheless, Tyson is determined to prove age is just a number and says he’s in shape to cause problems.
“I don’t think he is faster than me. I train every day. But I take this seriously. I get up and do the road work, then I go to the gym at one, then I go to the strength and conditioning guy, and then it starts all over again,” Tyson assured FOX News.
Asked what he thinks of Paul’s boxing ability, Tyson responded: “He has come a long way from YouTubing. He is going to come, and he is going to try and hurt me, which I am accustomed to. But he is going to be greatly mistaken. This is called an exhibition, and if you look up the exhibition, you will not see any of the laws that we are fighting under. This is a fight.
On what lured him back into the world’s toughest sport, Tyson replied: “I have a weird personality, but I don’t think it’s weird. Whatever I am afraid to do, I do it. I was afraid of the Roy Jones fight. But I was a hundred pounds overweight. I was 54, 53, and I said let’s do it. Anything I am afraid of, I confront it, and that’s my personality. Right now, I am scared to death, but as the fight gets closer, I become less nervous because it’s reality, and in reality, I am invincible.
“If I didn’t have these feelings, I wouldn’t go into the fight. I have to have them. Without them, I wouldn’t go in the ring,” he added before revealing his real reasoning for fighting.
“This is from my point of view. Me grabbing glory never for money only glory. I would never risk my health for money.”
That’s a far cry from what Tyson said at the end of his career in 2004 and 2005.
The official announcement of Paul vs Tyson will be rubberstamped in the coming weeks. Continued guesses over the rules mean there’s a lot of work to do behind the scenes to ensure everything is right before the confirmation.
A lack of Pay Per View helps the situation immensely, as there’s less pressure to drive sales. However, Netflix will still expect the most viewed combat sporting event of the year to take place on its streaming service.
Talk of Paul vs Tyson breaking viewer records for boxing could be a little premature, though. Netflix has 260 million subscribers, and Muhammad Ali regularly commanded more viewers worldwide than in his his fights back in the 1970s.
Ali’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle” was estimated to have been watched by one billion people and would dwarf Paul vs Tyson, which realistically won’t garner more than 25 to 50 million.
Tyson is a draw, and there’s no doubt about that. That’s why Paul turned to the boxing legend when his career waned, and Fury wanted no part of it. However, ten-second training videos are not the reality of in-ring competition. Tyson would need to get Paul out quickly before his body rejects the notion of fighting even two-minute rounds for a prolonged period.
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